Major University Enterprise System Upgrade

A Troubled Project Replaced High-Priced, Inexperienced Consultants With Iceberg Consultants, Getting More Talent For Less Money.

Project

A Big 10 university set out on a massive, multi-year, $83.5 million project to upgrade their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, including a thorough reexamination of their business processes. Human resources, student services and financial systems would all be upgraded to improve user experience and operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Challenge

During the first year of the project there was poor project management and very little metric to gauge the progress of the project. This resulted in the project falling way behind.

Solution

A new external project manager got the job back on course. Expensive and inexperienced consultants were replaced with Iceberg consultants. The reasonable rates of Iceberg consultants meant more could be put on the job, getting things done better and faster. We placed double the number of staff on the project as the primary vendor.

Work

We had consultants in all areas of the project, including business analysis, technical analysis, data warehouse, Oracle DBAs, developers, project management and testing. Our consultants held a number of lead roles and served as liaisons with key stakeholders to work through complex changes to their business process.

Impact

Our crucial help on this project led to a growing partnership. We landed a $10 million contract to provide IT services to this university, one of only four vendors awarded this highly competitive contract.

More Case Studies